Instead of the Lunar New Year Readathon I did last year, I’m considering trying to work my way through China Miéville’s list of Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read over at Fantastic Metropolis. Some of those books will be difficult-to-get, but I just got a credit card approved, so it might be possible to order them, used, if I really want to make my way through the whole list. (Meaning, the books I haven’t read, which is the majority of Miéville’s selections.)

Blue Mars I can get new at the grocery store, even. Green, as well, but not Red, for some odd reason. (At least, if I go to the right grocery store, the one with the Babar books which I’m looking at with a much more critical eye than when I was 5, and seeing all sorts of colonialist assumptions, and contemplating a massive write-up when I have the time and have read the 2 books I got recently and didn’t have in childhood. Tommy loves Babar….)

I’ll keep an eye out for the other stuff when I go to Round Rock for book shopping. (Not likely until at least next week.)

That’s weird. I wonder why they wouldn’t have Red Mars, if they have Blue and Green. So strange, that.

I barely remember Babar. Only the cartoon, too — I don’t think I ever read the books themselves.

Thanks a ton, Julia! I appreciate your kind generosity.

Oh, by the way, we were discussing colonialist assumptions in kids’ books the other day and I suggested an antidote that one doesn’t often hear much about in Anglo-America/Anglo-Canadian circles: Asterix. Have you read those comics? There’s a lot of Gaulish nose-thumbing directed at the “great” Caesar. Wonderfully critical of colonialist tactics and logic, wonderfully snide in its mockery of hegemonic power. Great books, as I remember. I have a few on hand in French, which I intended to read to sort of resuscitate my dying French, but I haven’t gotten to them yet. (Loaned them to a French-speaking neighbour and need to get them back at some point, actually, since I really do want to try reading them in the original French.) Anyway, maybe Tommy would like Asterix, later on. If so, there’s a counterbalance to the imperialist themes in Babar.